Border Crossing Deaths Rise In Texas

A new report looks at the number of migrants who die while attempting to cross the border from Mexico into Texas. The border deaths in Texas now exceed the deaths in Arizona for the first time. And activists say something must be done to identify the bodies left behind.

“Our worry is those that are recovered, the remains that are recovered, that the authorities were not following state law, and they were not taking DNA samples.”

Jiminez showed a photo of a missing 18-year-old from El Salvador, Eduardo Javier Henriquez Garcia. He was trying to reunite with his family in the U.S.

“He was crossing in April of this year. Around the 5th or 6th of April. He was with a group a few miles from Falfurrias checkpoint. He collapsed, the group left him there, basically informed the family. The family has been looking for him since then and has no news.”

The Texas Civil Rights Project says many of the counties in the Valley have no money to test the DNA of unidentified bodies, as required by state law.

In the meantime, volunteer groups have been exhuming migrant bodies from graves in south Texas in an attempt to identify the dead, inform their families, and give them a proper burial.